R. L. Hobson

R. L. Hobson, C.B., Keeper of the Department of Ceramics and Ethnography at the British Museum, wrote the guide to its Near Eastern Islamic pottery and signed its preface in February 1932. ^{1 2} In it he thanks A. S. Fulton of the Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts for correcting the romanisation of Eastern names. ²

• He holds that ceramic nomenclature has too often been hasty, the first plausible suggestion being accepted by an uncritical public and consecrated by usage, and gives "Rhodian" as an example, a name he says was banished from museums and scientific books but still used in salerooms and shops. ³
• He rejects assigning a group of blue-painted Turkish wares to Kutahya merely because an inscription names one of its dignitaries, since he knows of no pottery tradition there before the seventeenth century, and moves them to Iznik. ^{4 5}